Software applications and/or services are commonly offered to consumers in the form of grouped packages or suites, in which two or more such applications are provided. Such suites are generally provided at a lower cost than the combined cost of the individual applications included therein. In addition, the software suites typically comprise an assortment of related and/or interoperable applications or services targeted to satisfy the software needs of a particular type of customer, such as small businesses. Different applications suites may thus be provided to satisfy various market needs, where certain segments of software consumers commonly require more than one application or service.
The applications included within any particular suite package, as well as the software operating system (OS) residing in a customer's computer system may be revised or improved from time to time, in order to provide new and/or improved features, or to address problems or bugs. Consumers typically are provided with such software revisions through upgrades and/or service packs. For instance, an upgrade may replace an existing software application with a newer version or revision. This may be sold to the customer in various forms, such as a CDROM, or via a download using the Internet, wherein the upgrade may include the new application files and a setup or installation tool which the user employs to remove the old revision and install the new one. Upgrades are usually sold for major revisions of a software application or service.
Service packs are applied to an installed application. The application of a service pack, therefore, provides for revision of an installed application in place on the user's machine, without actually removing the existing code. Service packs are generally employed for minor revisions, such as bug fixes. In making such revisions, whether major or minor, software companies generally try to ensure some level of upward compatibility between products wherever possible. However, complete compatibility or inter-operability between various revisions of a plurality of applications and/or operating systems cannot always be achieved. Thus, a set of dependency requirements typically exist for inter-operability or compatibility between two or more such applications.
The revision dependency issue is of particular importance in the case of integrated software suites, which may comprise several applications. Prior to installing a suite of such applications, there may already be one or more software applications installed on a customer computer system. These pre-existing applications may include previous revisions of one or more applications within the suite. When such a software suite package is to be installed on a customer system, a conventional setup utility will prompt the user to indicate which applications from the suite are to be installed on the machine, and install the applications accordingly. However, there may be dependency problems between one or more of the installed software components and the pre-existing components. For example, a suite may install the latest revision of an operating system, whereas a pre-existing application in the computer system will not operate with the new OS. The customer computer system may thus be left in an inoperative or partially operative state once the setup utility has completed installation of the new OS. Thus, there is a need for improved setup utilities, which reduce or minimize the problems associated with operational dependencies between software components.